Opposite Sex also played recently in Dunedin with Colt 45 and The Terminals – and a cracker that was too.

I hear on good authority, in the absence of any listing, that the latter two are playing at the New City Hotel the night before Darxspace 3. NCH is a de facto space for Log Recordings – but it may become more than that, let’s see.

The Terminals will roll out their new ‘Antiseptic’ while Colt 45 will continue no doubt in the vein of… Snapper (Christine Voice and Dominic Stones in the line-up, a young chap called Jackson on guitar),

Yes good on Lorde for "Melodrama". Joel Little’s production on "Pure Heroine" always sounded hermetic to me but that now she’s got pianos and guitars and strings she’s sounding like the natural she obviously is. What is it though with favouring producers who used to be in previously useless guitar pop bands? Who’s next? Does someone from Fall Out Boy have a relevant CV?

I’m boosting SZA’s "CTRL" to anyone who’ll listen. She was on Rihanna’s ANTI which I own on vinyl and have built a small votive shrine to in the basement. Also, her name is pronounced “scissor” which is triple word score shit as far as I’m concerned.

It's not just that the reviews are extraordinary, it's the quality of the reviews I'm finding most interesting. They really 'get' Lorde and are engaging with her on her terms. Whether it's a commercial success at this stage pretty much irrelevant. The triumph is all hers.http://www.metacritic.com/music/melodrama/lorde?ref=hp

I enjoyed "Royals" but it never quite struck me as a revelation. She was a very clever, self-assured 16 year old but a 16 year old nonetheless. It's waaaay better than Janis Ian but when I listen to Pure Heroine the callowness of the pose spoils it for me. Melodrama is conspicuously more adult which, as an adult, I appreciate. I'm afraid I'm totally the guy that wants to give Holden Caulfield a slapping.

His comparison of ‘Liability’ with ‘All the Young Dudes’ is completely mystifying,

But this touches on some very interesting points:

I still remain ambivalent about “Royals,” and because there’s no reason why a good song couldn’t survive – couldn’t thrive on – an ambivalent response, I’m sure I’ll keep Melodrama around in November. I like her album but she’s still got traveling to do. Having worked Pure Heroine into an old-fashioned sleeper hit just before the era of album-equivalent units, she caught so many of us off guard a redress is inevitable. I think she will record better albums. But she’s so young that I worry she won’t survive another hype cycle. In a way Lorde reminds me of semipopular figures like Chris Isaak or a Suzanne Vega: artists who got lucky once and settled a couple albums later into quieter career patterns sustained by an immoveable fan base. We don’t live in that era any more, alas; artists can’t live on streams alone.

A Facebook friend with an unfortunate (and negative) bee in his bonnet noted other commentary suggesting that, basically, Lorde and her album aren’t optimised for the Spotify era.

And it’s true. Lorde will have a No.1 US album this week without having a single tune in the US Spotify Top 50. She’s No.1 on the iTunes worldwide chart, nowhere on the Spotify global chart.

And maybe that’s just how it’ll be. The top of the Spotify global chart (Luis Fonsi, DJ Khaled) is utterly risible and really nothing to do with what she does. Being Chris Isaak wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but I don’t think that’s a good comparison either. I find it hard to believe that the age of streaming means there will be no place for artists who make albums.

Also to note: Melodrama will be No.1 on the Billboard 200 album chart with first-week sales (including "sales equivalents") of 80,000-90,000. That's two places better than Pure Heroine's first week – but Pure Heroine hit No.3 with 129,000 sales. It's not Lorde, it's the whole damn industry.

After a while, the record feels less like a subversion of pop tropes than like a hyperintelligent narration of them. “I know this story by heart / Jack and Jill get fucked up and get possessive when they get dark,” Lorde confesses on “Sober,” a song that is perhaps about a drug comedown; it’s also about the experience of being too lucid to ever really feel drunk. Once an outsider comfortable exploring the superego of pop, she’s now inside it, grasping for the keys to its id.

Indeed. Or (cough) Neil Finn. Someone once asked Joe Boyd who he thought had the best career in music and he said "Richard Thompson, even though he probably doesn't realise it". Lorde's ambition is Taylor Swift's audience but unless she commits to raising the banger count she might have to settle for Vampire Weekend's. And that would be no bad thing.